Buddhism is a path of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted, abandoned, or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of vibrant life, deep wisdom, and compassionate living. This is the connotation of the classical statement that sums up the goal of Buddhist life: ‘Transform delusion into enlightenment.’ On the everyday level of experience, Shin Buddhists speak of this transformation as ‘bits of rubble turned to gold.’
—Taitetsu Unno
By identifying impermanence as a fundamental characteristic of existence itself, rather than a problem to be solved, the Buddhists are encouraging us to let go our hold on illusory solidity and learn to swim freely in the sea of change. Instead of mourning what is lost when alteration occurs, we can open to the opportunities each new moment brings.
—Andrew Olendzki
Excerpted from Unlimited Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism by Andrew Olendzki (Wisdom Publication, 2013).
Hearing a crow with no mouth
Cry in the deep
Darkness of the night,
I feel a longing for
My father before he was born.—Ikkyu Sojun (1394–1481)
Excerpted from A Zen Harvest translated by Soku Shigematsu (North Point Press, 1988).
Biology and neuroscience tell us what’s going on in our brains when we experience pleasant or unpleasant emotions. Buddhism helps us not only to describe such experiences more explicitly to ourselves, but also provides us with the means to go about changing our thoughts, feelings and perceptions so that on a basic, cellular level we can become happier, more peaceful, and more loving human beings.
—Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Excerpted from The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (Harmony, 2007).
The aphorism ‘Abandon all hope of reward’ can be understood in different ways. For starters, it advises us to abandon all hopes of gaining status, respect, fame, magical powers, and other mundane rewards in this life. From the highest perspective, it means we are finally able to abandon even the hope of enlightenment. As long as we are still caught in the dualistic mind-set of viewing ourselves as deluded sentient beings struggling to achieve something we don’t have, that very mentality, together with its hopes for our enlightenment and fear of failure, obstructs our realization of our own buddha-nature, which is already present.
—B. Alan Wallace
Excerpted from Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point Mind Training by B. Alan Wallace (Snow Lion, 2001).
Wanting and fearing are natural energies, part of evolution’s design to protect us and help us to thrive. But when they become the core of our identity, we lose sight of the fullness of our being. We become identified with, at best, only a sliver of our natural being—a sliver that perceives itself as incomplete, at risk and separate from the rest of the world. If our sense of who we are is defined by feelings of neediness and insecurity, we forget that we are also curious, humorous and caring. We forget about the breath that is nourishing us, the lover that unites us, the enormous beauty and fragility that is our shared experience in being alive. Most basically, we forget the pure awareness, the radiant wakefulness that is our Buddha nature.
—Tara Brach
